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I got to take Jordu Schell’s creature sculpting class thru Anatomytools in Alameda in early October. A wonderful class – the sculpts around the room were incredible. And Jordu is fascinating to watch work. He is such a master of what he knows and what he does, he can create perfect forms with what seems like a single stroke. And he showed us how he paints his chavant maquettes to present as concept art – absolutely incredible.

We were asked to bring sketches of an original concept if possible – I’ve been wanting to try some different versions of the preying mantis lady i sculpted back when the world was young, so I started trying to do some sketches.

awhile back, when i was whining about not being good, and being blocked and not being about to come up with ideas – folks suggested some books to read. I got “The Artist’s Way” ebook and started to work thru it. i’m glad i got the ebook – because the first 5 or 6 times i started it i just couldn’t relate to it at all. But since i had it on my phone, whenever i was stuck waiting somewhere, i started opening it and just reading a page or two. and eventually what the author, Julia Cameron, was saying started to sink in, and i can see that it has really helped.

She asks you to turn around the way you are thinking – and i realized she was right – I didn’t want to draw because I was judging my baby sketches against fine artists’ final output and i was too prideful to do something that folk could see i wasn’t great at. Add in, in a couple of workshops I’ve had with him, Andrew Cawrse has told me repeatedly, drawing is a tool for me to get the information i need for a sculpt. not to worry about making a beautiful drawing, just capture what i need to sculpt from.

Ms. Cameron also tells you to relax and let creation flow thru you – she seems to be a deeply spiritual/religious woman – and I found this hard to identify with. But she was right. If i didn’t tense up and overthink things, instead just remove judgement and let idea suggest idea and follow willingly without judging, i started to get closer to the images in my head.

Jordu said something interesting. (actually he said LOTS of things that were interesting) — he said at one moment, when he was starting out, he saw a sculpt and something in his mind said – this is truth. And that is what he aims for now. He feels he only achieves truth part of the time in his sculpts, but when he does it just feels right.

so i’ve started sketching some now – and am finding it really helpful to order thoughts and explore possibilities. still too newbie at it to feel anything but hesitant, but i think i may grow to love it.

so anyway – here is a progression of the concept sketches I worked on for the sculpt :

1. this was the first sketch. pretty conservative, but a start.

2. then started thinking and playing with the body shape

3. tried a quick sketch of a possible face – showed it to Andrew and he suggested thinking about the way that insect mandibles work.

4. then followed ideas a little to a slightly more interesting place

5. and here is the sculpt – I saw her as surreal, smallish, – Jordu wanted her to be earthshakenly large and able to walk – he pointed out that she needed more mass at her abdomen to balance the head, and suggested a large spider like abdomen. I played for awhile and decided i like a carapace, cracked open, with 2 wings extending – and kept the original abdomen with spinneret at the end that shows (faintly) thru the opening

built a quick estimate of the torso – struggling with the arm abit – in person it measures appropriately, but foreshortening in the photo makes me uncertain. kept trying to push the pose further, but used too heavy of aluminum wire for the armature — will just have to keep trying!

and the face maybe should have been screaming. i need to try to sculpt a scream…..

have had a few weeks of family emergencies – so feel a little disconnected from everything. have had lots of time inside my head while sitting in hospital waiting rooms (my father-in-law is doing much better now) and got to thinking about how to recreate in clay some of the sketchier ideas that i see in my mind’s eye. started a quick beginning of one idea – and was wondering about continuing. this might be better done in a really hard clay, because the effect needs really precise lines I think. also having problems seeing. hate when that happens, end up taking my glasses off and peering blindly at the piece from an inch or two out. then i lose sight of the overall piece. so i hate the mouth, the eyes are too close together and the ears are dumbo like. but its just a rough draft/proof of concept thing so, get over it Pat!

if i continue with him, he would probably have just a portion of his torso, with one arm perhaps reaching towards the viewer…. wonder if it could be done in the Premier paperclay….but in my mind’s eye its dark. huh! maybe this could be the grey firm supersculpy……

hmmm – well, i’m pretty happy with myself for staying mostly focused on doing the sculpt a month for this long — so i guess i’m not too upset that i totally didn’t work on the dragon/snake lady at all this week – and worked on the watcher in the corner instead.

i know it sounds silly, but there has been a sense of a presence watching while i sculpted the dragon lady — nothing scary or strange, just the knowledge that there was someone there kind of shyly watching. so she got formed from clay this week —-

working on her got me thinking about my experiences with a friend who is an incredible artist, combined with a true performer’s soul who can spin a story to captivate her audience thru speech, drawing and sculpting. Me – on a good day i don’t stutter or drool too badly when strangers want to talk to me. Or heavens above – when an artist I admire speaks to me? hopeless. I just can’t string 2 words together.

so when i sensed this little person standing in the corner watching the elegant snake lady perform – I realized it was like me watching my friend enspell any group of artists she meets, or like me in the workshops, watching the artists I admire so much, but can’t talk to.

kind of felt nice, or comfortable to sculpt her.

wish i could do better detail in this paperclay — i think i want to find a tiny bladed but strong knife to work with….

I’m partly really happy to see that she is taking shape ok in the premier, and partly OH SO READY TO MOVE ON!!!

i guess its a moral victory that i’m sticking with her – for me, the fun part is just doing the quick gesture. i have a dreadfully short attention span and really want to move on to the next fun thing instead of staying and refining. But she is coming together anyway. still a lot of work to do, and this is the last week… be interesting to see where she is at the end of it.

this pic shows a bit better what is going on with her right shoulder – i didn’t realize how ambiguous pictures were last week….

you know, i’m not at all sure how correct my naming of projects is going to be…. not that it is terribly important! but that is one of those weird things that throws me for a loop sometimes.

I got horribly frustrated with the snake/dragon lady and ended up smashing her back leg with a hammer and rebuilding it – and feel much better about it now. so after that I started laying in the snake/dragon body which got me sidetracked into reading about snakes. figure this snake is something like 12 feet long (i think she is a tall lady) – so wanted to look at body types etc on snakes that get that big. Wow – definitely not an anaconda/boa constrictor type – they have those wonderful sumptious bodies but would easily weigh 250-300 lbs. heavy for the woman to hold up, unless its a dragon with wings/magic.

so figure it must be a reticulated python type – which would be thinner but still heavy. so am thinking harder about some sort of wing structures so the lady isn’t squished.

as i was working on her I started seeing a dwarf woman standing to one side watching her. so might start that sculpt too.

anyway – posting in the round for the pain factor – keep myself working on her.

my workspace is a table in our spare room. these chavant figures don’t pile up on each other well —- so i’m running out of space. And I want to go to NIADA next year, so i need to have some finished figures to take a long. So I figured it was time to switch to paperclay and see how it goes.

boy – the chavant really spoils you. Paperclay is so much harder to work in, the first week it was all i could do not to literally take a sledge hammer to the blamed thing.

part of it is that the premier is so soft, I can’t leave it wet, or i squish it out of shape the next time i pick it up. So i lay in an area, dry it in a 170 oven overnight, then carve away and add more on, and dry again. I find it really hard to try to make the figure fluid in it – and the whole process is so very slow. But at the end I have a figure that i can seal and/or paint and take around with me for shows…. or give to friends so at least i don’t have to smash it to make room for more…

at this point i’m starting to be sort of ok with the figure – it was supposed to be a woman with one of those long thin wind-dragonslike in Spirited Away — but she is starting to look more like an old-time carnie painting advertising the snake charmer…..

always wanted to do a really dark, old fashioned carnie series…..

and as usual – photos in the round really show lots that needs to be worked on.

seemed to have stalled out on this guy – so trying to shame myself into getting back to work on him – pics in the round always show so much to work on. his back is very rough, and the curve of his spine, and the curve of the latissimus dorsi doesn’t work – also his torso is too thick , not enough compression at the side where he is bent towards his left leg. fought with his neck for a long time – it was horribly thick, its a bit better now, but the trapezius isn’t right. —- a lot of the curves that should be echoing/reinforcing the flow of the piece just aren’t.

oh man, there is never enough time. one week into the 4 weeks, and fumbling my way to knowing who this person is.

i get overly philosophical sometimes – there is something about squishing clay that lets my mind wander free and it is far more presumptions than i am in real life. but i discovered this person didn’t seem to have eyes which started me thinking about a blind sword fighter as a metaphor for life – and i really liked that – grace, alertness, and never able to see what is about to clobber him… so started with just leaving the eye area blank, then gave him a blindfold, and now i’m playing with a hood like falconers put on hawks and falcons. no telling if he will keep it for the whole month, but i like it for right now. got to figure out how to braid 7 or 9 strands correctly though…. or fake it better.

the armature is really in the way to work on the back of him, or to take pictures in the round, so i may take it off now. not sure how sturdy he is.

I’m starting to like this guy – about 20″ tall if standing upright – and i’m starting to see a chinese dragon – or an insect like dragon that he is fighting.

thinking a bit about some overthetop gothic leather and buckles clothing – maybe —— saw some outrageous half-corset black leather things that had no practicality at all….. or maybe he needs some variant on chinese clothing? simpler to leave him nude – but what kind of idiot goes to fight a dragon nude?